Nocturnal Habits
by misscam
Summary: She keeps looking for the switch that will explain him. [GrissomSara]


Nocturnal Habits  
by Camilla Sandman

Disclaimer: CSI and all things associated with it is the property of CBS. I am merely borrowing for my own amusement.

II

He keeps kissing her, and she keeps looking for the switch that will explain him.

Somewhere, there has to be one, and flicking it will throw light on everything he has done and will do and she'll understand. There has to be A Reason, an event, something that defined him, something she can find and analyze and map out. Everyone has something, and she knows hers, but for all the little grains of information Grissom shares, they remain just that. Little grains that may glimmer when she first finds them, but in the end, none of them seem to be It.

He is confusing her. 

She came to Las Vegas and he was the Grissom she thought she knew, and there were words she recognised as flirting and smiles she recognised as promises and touches she recognised as caring and looks she didn't recognise at all. His body would be so close to hers she could feel the warmth from it, but she knows now that was only the illusion of proximity.

He grew distant, she grew frustrated, and somewhere along the line there was Hank too. It didn't feel like a betrayal. Hank was nothing like Grissom, and somehow, that was important. He still hurt her, and Grissom hurt her, and work was piecing together the echoes of what hurt humans could inflict upon each other. It was a roar, and for a while she searched for silence. 

It seems strange to her even now how much hush there can be in a voice. In Grissom's, saying all the things she's wanted to hear to a murderer, and she only the accidental listener.

Coward Grissom, and for a while she thought maybe that was It, the thing that could make her understand. Someone had burned him, and he was afraid of another relationship. It seemed logical and straightforward, but somehow, it was lacking too. She heard whispers and rumours and names and realised whatever It was, the fear didn't extend to other women.

So she wondered if it was her, and that seemed the most painful and most flattering reason of all.

It still didn't seem enough. She gave him a glimpse into her defining moments, and he said nothing. She braved her fear and had a madman at her throat, and he still said nothing. She started to think it was all in her head and Grissom had never done anything but to be just friendly, and he started smiling at her again.

Smiling to flirts to comfortable silences to a body in the desert to the long drive back and awaking to a still car, the window cold against her cheek and his lips warm against her forehead. She isn't sure why he kissed her, and she's less sure still why he keeps doing it. It isn't the fairytale Cinderella kiss, waking her from the sleeping. His nose bumps into her awkwardly as he tries to angle himself better, and his beard scratches her skin and she wonders why he needed the camouflage of hair when the camouflage of skin he has seems impenetrable. His lips are a little dry and taste of desert, but then, she's sure hers taste a little of gum and fingerprint dust.

"Why now?" she whispers, passing cars catching the grey in his hair as he looks at her.

"You weren't waiting for it," he says simply.

She wonders if expectation is a fear, and his face gives her no clue. He just looks at her, and seems almost oblivious to the fact that it's been years and hurt and other people from the time he first looked at her like that.

"Why are you, Grissom?"

"What do you mean?"

"I am what I am because my mother murdered my father, because my family was screwed up and I still hear them screaming in the part of my brain that is forever five and because the only silence I can find, I hear when give myself the illusion that there is justice," she rushes out. "Why are you, Grissom?"

"I don't know."

For anyone else, that would be a cheap answer, but she thinks maybe from him, it is the truth.

"My father died and my mother was deaf," he says suddenly, another little grain glimmering under the desert moon. "I grew up a ghost." 

"Even ghosts have a reason to haunt," she counters. He smiles at little at her, and kisses her again, and she doesn't know if it's an acknowledgement that she's right or simply a way of avoiding answering. It's a good way, granted, but she isn't fooled. She's going to ask again.

"Let's go home," he says, straightening up and turning the engine back on. It roars to life, and the desert is silent back. It surprises her how much Las Vegas feels like a home, her home, her habitat.

"Yeah," she agrees. "I'm not going to wait another handful of years for you to make another move, Grissom."

"I know."

For Grissom, maybe that's a promise, she considers. Maybe it's a start, after so many false ones. Maybe it's hope, and she's learned to live on that.

"Maybe they just like it where they are," he says suddenly, and she looks up sharply.

"Hmm?"

"The ghosts."

Maybe she doesn't need a switch, she thinks. Maybe she's nocturnal, and live best in the dark. Maybe he's a ghost, and does too.

For anyone else, those would be a habits to break, but she thinks for them, maybe, just maybe - it's why it will work.

She's grown very good at living on hope in the absence of light.

FIN


End file.
